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WOW!!! I just poured baits without salt or flake...

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Poured some baits without salt or flake for the first time (Don't know why I haven't before :huh: )...

I am just amazed at how easy it is to pour perfect baits without additives AND how much longer the plastic stays warm. I might start pouring more veins now!!!

I wish so many anglers didn't need flake or salt. I wonder how the fish would feel about this as my life would be much better :lol: !!!

Jim

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I point blank asked Shaw Grigsby, Ken Cook, MArk Menendez and Davey Hite about salt, bass attractants and scents in or on their plastic baits....guess what they all said??!!!

They all said emphatically that a bass strikes a lure 99% of the time out of anger (and 1% or less of the time out of hunger!!) and will hold on plenty long enough for you to set the hook if you are an observant angler!!!

None of them believed in scents as they pointed out, especially Ken Cook, the Fisheries Biologist, that by the time fish can actually "smell" the bait, it is in or already out of their mouth. He said "Its not like your chumming for sharks or something" :lol: !!

Basically what they said was that if a certain scent or salt content bait gives you confidence in a bait, then keep using it because confidence catches fish....all the additives, salt, scent...catch fishermen/women!!!

Jim...who likes to fish with baits scented and some salt!! :twisted:

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a bass strikes a lure 99% of the time out of anger (and 1% or less of the time out of hunger!!) and will hold on plenty long enough for you to set the hook if you are an observant angler!!!

So-o-o many times I've caught bass and pickerel that have had fat full bellies (long after spawn) and partly digested prey still in their gullets.

Salt is great for casting distance with little or no weight used, but a pain to add. I'll keep everyone informed about cystal flakes that I'm experimenting with as a sub for salt.

The tear drop plastics I've poured for ice fishing, have caught tons of panfish and none contain salt. Much of the time a lone sunny or perch will munch on the tiny lure with #8 hook imbedded for a few minutes and then BANG! The same for 1/32 oz. hair jigs I tied using no meat as enticer.

Flutter in position - stop - and BANG! Have caught over 100 fish in three weeks (5 species) using a combo of Swedish Pimple spoons with meal worms, to chum the hole, and soft plastics for the majority of fish.

I will try some 3" drop shot worms I recently poured from dipping - no salt added.

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I will have to humbly agree and disagree........ :lol:

There are times (especially on our river) when I believe you can throw anything in your tackle box and catch fish..........and in HUGE numbers too.

Other times, it takes a heavy crawfish and/or garlic scent to draw strikes. We have proven this many times going with a 2-man scent/no scent test. The man using scent will outfish the other 3 to 1 on most occasions, often times casting in the same areas where the no-scent has been.

Chris

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Remember...we were talking bass fishing only...AND pros who can detect a fish swim by their bait 50 ft away!!!

I guess my big question is then why do fish hit crank baits and spinner baits...they have no scent, huge dangling hooks, and definitely no salt.. :?:

Most times I can outfish anybody on cranks no matter what they are throwing because I have a feel for how those lures react underwater and what they are doing most of the time.

Again, I think it all comes down to confidence in that bait and how in tune you are with it....

One thing is for sure, nothing beats a wiggling worm or a nice fat cricket!!!

Jim

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Other than stick baits, I do not like salt in my plastics. In my opinion, salt does 2 things: Adds weight and takes away action. I can't say that I have proven unsalted baits outfish salted baits but after watching the action of the unsalted baits in clear water, it has become a confidence thing with me. I believe with all the scent we have available today that salt is a thing of the past unless your bait requires additional weight to perform.

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On the subject of salt in baits, I always felt that its main purpose was to add weight, period. That's what gives the Senko its tantalizing slow fall; a salt mixture that makes it j-u-s-t heavier than water. I don't add salt to anything except to adjust its fall.

On the subject of scents, I am 100% certain that they make a difference. I catch more fish with scents and less fish without; period. I would never throw a soft plastic without MegaStrike. But I think that the main goal of attractants is to get the fish to hold on to the bait longer so the angler has a better chance to recognize that he has a bite and set the hook, with a secondary task of covering undesireable odors. Salt on the outside of the bait would probably help to some degree to increase hold times because salt implies "alive" more than no salt... at least I think it would.

In his book "Knowing Bass; The Scientific Approach To Catching More Fish", Dr. Keith A. Jones writes that they performed extensive tests on this subject at the Berkley Fish Research Center. In one test, they modified a Rapala Shad Rap and replaced part of the body with a shaped sponge to maintain bait shape. They then ran tests with the sponge soaked in water versus the sponge soaked in scent. Groups of five bass that had never been exposed to lures were exposed to the bait, and the number of times they struck were monitored over a 5 minute period. New bass were used for each group so that anything they learned from their previous experience would not affect the outcome. The tests were repeated with different groups of bass. The results were that the scented lure averaged almost exactly twice as many strikes (an average of 47 over 5 minutes for the scented bait as opposed to 24 / 5 minutes for the unscented). They also found that the bait was held approximately three times as long with scent as without.

Maybe what happens is that the top pros are so sensitive to what the bass are doing, (and are using such good equipment!) that they don't need that extra time to detect a strike. But I need all the help I can get!

BTW, the Jones book is outstanding, and I got some very good information out of it, but I wouldn't recommend reading it to anyone who didn't have the patience to wade through the scientific information. For example, there are 22 pages on how the bass brain works, complete with dissection photos.

One interesting thing I did get out of it was that the best crawfish shape was without claws! Experiments showed that bass hit a crawfish shape without claws significantly more than one with claws, but Berkley declined to market such a product because anglers would never buy it.

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Salt on the outside of the bait

Good point N.J.

Salt on the outside of a bait is not there for very long - one cast only.

Salt that is embedded in the skin of a soft plastic also will dissolve after dunking enough times.

Salt that is embedded in a worm stays undetected because fish bite the worm but not into it or tear it's surface. I believe it's the softness and chewability that keeps them holding on longer. Salt does not join with the molecules of plastic to create a new compound - crystals, no matter how fine, stay separate.

Now, from my experiences with ice fishing this winter, I believe that the scent of a bleeding wax worm did turn fish on beneath me, and that from that point on, unscented plastic was enough to catch 10-15 out of one hole. In this sense, a potion that stays on the surface of a lure is not a bad idea for slow reaction bites and neutral bass, but for most of my fishing, swimming lures( grubs, cranks, blade baits), topwaters and all lure types other than soft plastics that just sit-&-jiggle, I don't believe benefit from using scent.

Power fishermen don't have (or need) the time to use scent, and many pros are run-&-gun anglers or flippers that crash through the veg using a 1 oz. sinker or jig. In other words, wham-bham-thank you ma'am!

I do use scent - (my rabbit's foot) - just - in - case... :wink:

Crappies get turned off by it, but that proves that it does have an affect!!

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Jim,

Those baits are so effective because bass are first and foremost sight feeders. In the bass' brain, they act like food so they are food. Or in some cases they act like a threat (lizard on a bed) and so they get smashed. All I'm saying is that once the bass strikes, it's more likely to hold on to the bait if it has scent. And yes, I sometimes put scent on crankbaits and even spoons. (I've often thought that the perfect solution for a jigging spoon is to coat it in clear plastic so it'll hold scent better. Now that I'm pouring my own baits, maybe I'll try that.)

Sam, I respectfully disagree. First of all, I know several excellent fishermen who fish Federation and even BASS Open events and use scent extensively. So the thought that pros never use it isn't consistent with my experience. Second, I just catch more fish with it than without. It's not a confidence thing; it's just true. Virtually all the guys I fish with regularly have the same experience. As I said, maybe the pros don't need that extra hold time but it helps me.

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Personally I dont know if they work that well or not but they dont seem to hurt so I will continue to use them.

I cant say that they have greatly increased or decreased my catches or if the fish hold on to baits coated or not. They do help mask human and mechanical scents though so they cant be too bad.

Robert

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Jim, I do not see the need to add scent of any kind to a crankbait or a spinnerbait. with these baits the fish do not have time to taste it. With soft plastics the time between the fish picking up the bait and the hook set is much longer which gives them time to make a decision. I believe that the purpose of scent is to buy time in setting the hook. I do not believe that scent is an attractant. Scent of any kind does not play a role until the fish takes the bait(atlest for bass). I also believe that when fishing plastics we get more bites than we know about. Some are detected and some are not. Your equipment and experience plays a bigger role.

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Have you ever had a bass follow a crankbait all the way in and never hit it? That's why I scent a crankbait. In my mind it sets up a "chum line" of scent behind the bait for the fish to hone in on and maybe get him to think that it's edible. Maybe it's a confidence thing and maybe it's not. I really don't care as long as it catches fish. B)

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I guess as long as the scent used is not oil based (like Fish Formula and Bait Mate) the fish may taste or smell it.

Dr. Jones mentioned the the molecules of oil are much too large to fit into the receptors for taste and smell in fish and cannot be detected. If a crank had a sponge or scent release chamber, I suppose a trail might be possible, but without, I can't see it.

Omouri won the Citgo BASS world championship in the last 10 minutes of the final tx day using a Bagley Killer B crank to bring in a nice bag. He was running the crank in shallow water near overhangs and past laps at a medium to fast retrieve and caught over 15lbs. in a small stretch of water.

Iaconelli was also cranking large areas and catching fish.

Neither's catch would have benefited from using scent. Same for Brauer, flipping trees or Jay Yelas using a topwater frog.

Reaction lures are bit from reflex, reactive lures are bit for all the other reasons fish bite. Like politics and religion, scent will always be controversial because, - put two anglers of equal skill in a boat, one using scent , the other not, - how will they compare over many outings?

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So true, so true. But back to the question of weighting versus the reduction in action when using salt. I now stock clear plastic flakes (sugar) that adds weight to a lure but doesn't detract from it's softness and allow light to pass through.

Salted baits allow almost no light through and make a lure unevenly firmer.

Salt settles easily and clogs production pots.

It makes the bottom layer of plastic unusable for reheating.

Salt makes plastic lures less durable and absorbs water, making it permanently useless.

I small bit of floured salt can still be used for taste, but the heavier lure allows a smaller weight to be used for a better horizontal action of any lure style.

I've sent samples to five people, plus worms that have no salt. It is my standard for weighting plastics and I thing bigger fish have done the same thing.

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I flat out hate pouring salt added baits....nothing but trouble.

Senkosam, I will be contacting you soon about your flakes.

Back to the scent thing, I have used scents quite a bit the

past few years. I have been using a scent called Getz'em.

It's a green paste which stays on the lure very well and for

longer periods of time, so you don't have to re-apply so much.

I use scents primarily to mask any odors. Remember, Bass have

an extremely acute sense of smell. Spinnerbaits, crankbaits, etc...

all are reaction type strikes, but I still feel that "scent" plays a

role in sealing the deal so to speak. I have caught a 4.5# largemouth

and a 6# Largemouth in each of the last two Championships ('03-'04)

for the K.M.M.B.T., I was using Getz'em on those lures: Spinnerbait

and Deep Crank.

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